Drawing upon decades of experience, RAND provides research services, systematic analysis, and innovative thinking to a global clientele that includes government agencies, foundations, and private-sector firms.

The Pardee RAND Graduate School (PRGS.edu) is the largest public policy Ph.D. program in the nation and the only program based at an independent public policy research organization—the RAND Corporation.

Summary Only

Download Support Files

Excel Spreadsheets

These spreadsheets contain the interactive tool referred to in the working paper. They were created using Microsoft Excel 2003. The interactive feature may not work under the Macintosh operating system.

The file(s) provided above are ZIP-formatted archives, which most modern systems can natively unpack. If your computer does not unpack the archive when you double-click it, you may need to use a separate decompression program such as UnZip.

In May 2006, the U.S. government issued its comprehensive government-wide plan to prepare for the next influenza pandemic: the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation Plan, which lays out responsibilities for federal agency actions in the United States. One of the Implementation Plan’s three pillars is Surveillance and Detection, which prominently focuses on international surveillance activities. This documents reports on a RAND study, conducted from October 2005 through November 2006, which identifies strategies for improving global influenza surveillance and suggests practical steps that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services might consider for implementing them. The study’s systematic analytic approach also resulted in the development of an interactive tool that agencies can use to evaluate the effects of selected strategies. The interactive tool and the approach described in the study approach should also be of interest to public administrators who routinely must determine strategies for a variety of public policy issues.

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Introduction

Chapter Two

Background

Chapter Three

Conceptual Framework

Chapter Four

A Process Model and Interactive Tool for Comparing Strategies to Improve Probability and Timeliness of Case Detection

The research described in this report was prepared for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and performed under the auspices of RAND Health.

This report is part of the RAND Corporation working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings and to solicit informal peer review. They have been approved for circulation by RAND but may not have been formally edited or peer reviewed.

Permission is given to duplicate this electronic document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Copies may not be duplicated for commercial purposes. Unauthorized posting of RAND PDFs to a non-RAND Web site is prohibited. RAND PDFs are protected under copyright law. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit the RAND Permissions page.

The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.

The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest.